Thursday, September 20, 2012

Friday Favorite: My Planner

I was so very excited when I received my planner, a la Sam Shah, in the mail.

I am simply not able to hold very many things in my brain at one time. If I try, I get stressed out and overwhelmed. I manage my life by putting everything on paper. I have never found a planner that meets all of my needs, so I had started trying to create my own. I was having trouble with the execution until I read Sam's post, and now here it is!

Here is a blank page.

In addition to all the usual stuff, there is a little letter representing each item that I have to check off on a daily basis:

T -- look over the lesson plans for TODAY and make sure all supplies are ready.
G -- Grades recorded for that day.
3 -- look 3 days ahead and prepare pages for my aide to copy.
S -- Summarize that lesson (specifically, what went well & what didn't)
N -- email a copy of the day's Notes
V -- upload the Video from the day's lesson
A -- Absent students' makeup work

Here's what it looks like at the beginning of the week. I have written the topic of each lesson, additional items that I need to do each day, and appointments and such.

And here's what it looks like at the end of the week. I have written a little summary of each lesson in a different color. These are the notes I will (hopefully) use when I am planning next year. And everything is crossed off. If it doesn't get done, I cross it off anyway and re-write it on the next week's calendar. You know, because I can't turn to the next page if something isn't crossed off.

4 comments:

Oh my this is totally perfect!! I could not find a planner that I liked for my student teaching placement and this looks awesome! I was curious though how you bound it together. What did you put it in?? I am totally for making my own perfect planner, but I am stuck on the keeping it together part. Great idea!

Hi Kayla! I am glad this was helpful. I converted the file to a pdf and uploaded it to lulu.com. You have several options there, but I think I chose the saddle stitch which is really just staples. I encourage you to read Sam's post that I linked here. It was his original idea and he explains it better. Good luck with your student teaching!

Hi Kimberly, thanks for reading! I do try to record myself whenever I am talking in front of the class. I use a smart slate and a blue snowball microphone. The microphone is very nice, but the smart slate is a challenge as you can't see what you are writing. I am supposed to be getting an ipad soon and I will hopefully switch to educreations or something like that. Live recordings are full of imperfections, but they allow me to provide a recording to my absent students without spending any extra time outside of class.